On Wednesday, August 30, 2017 at 4:46:31 PM UTC-7, Peter Stewart wrote: > On 31-Aug-17 9:22 AM, wjhonson wrote: > > Let's say some eighth generation descendant or Franz, married some ninth generation descendant of Mary. > > > > How can I tell if a snippet came through the line from Mary or the line from Franz???? How!!!!! > > > > Because you test people who came through Mary but did *not* come through Franz, and you test people who came through Franz and did *not* come through Mary. > > And you establish this by ... a paper trail? > > As one of the pigeons who pursue medieval genealogy with NIL interest in > DNA results of any kind, I find the cultural aspect of relationships > between people more interesting than the biological. And FAR more > interesting than their culturally and biologically diffuse and dilute > connection to modern individuals. > > Peter Stewart I don't. Personally I think people who use Y-DNA to give "strong evidence" for their "strong paper trail" are misguided, or possibly worse. I am more of an advocate for using Autosomal DNA to turn traditional genealogy upside-down. Start with a foundation, then build.